


the meaning of a word

by jackgyeoms



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 17:18:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6966076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackgyeoms/pseuds/jackgyeoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy calls her mother and it takes a second for Dinah to react.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the meaning of a word

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [@xandersnohr](http://xandersnohr.tumblr.com)

 

The boy calls her mother and it takes a second for Dinah to react. It is foreign to her ears, a voice unfamiliar, and quite frankly it leaves her feeling weighed under responsibility. Parenthood wasn’t something she had really thought about, even when Frederick had slid that ring onto her finger. There were wars and political strife to contend with, and without a past Dinah was contented in her present. But the future came through a light in the sky, and it came to her in the form of a son.

Dinah turns to him now. He’s hurrying down the camp towards her, with a smile so wide that she cannot help but return it. _He looks like Frederick when he smiles._

“Mama, Mama,” Morgan chants between heavy pants. He skids to a stop at her feet, and she can see the red hue to his brown skin that signified exhaustion. He’s a good head or two shorter than her, and so young in his face. It makes her wonder how old he was when she died, but she doesn’t want to ask. For all they are trying to change the future, there is much she doesn’t want to know about it.

“Yes, Morgan?” she stumbles over the name.

Morgan took in a long breath, “Mama,” he starts, “I found a river. Will you come and fill the canisters up with me?”

Dinah says, “Why?” and winces at how harsh it sounds. Morgan, for his part, is unfazed, smile never wavering when he answers, “I wanted to catch up with you.”

Catch up. Not for her. But she cannot refuse him – she concedes with a nod, and follows his bouncing steps as he leads the way. He remains close to her, dances around her feet; runs off only to return to her side. There’s a shortcut to the riverbank on the west side of the camp, but when Morgan takes them down the main path, Dinah doesn’t redirect him. She thinks that might stop him smiling, and she knows deep in the pit of her stomach that is the last thing she wants.

“It’s pretty isn’t it Mama?” Morgan asks.

Dinah hums, squints against the sun’s rays. The land is open here more so than at the camp site, bright and airy, and there is something comforting in the sound of running water compared to the clanking of metals that is now too far away to hear. It’s just them here, and that feeling of responsibility slots back into place.

Dinah has to walk away, fumbles with her canister before she dips it below the water’s edge. The waves lap, cool against her fingers, and the little splashes against her wrist leave her dark flesh speckled. She takes a deep drink, and then goes back to refilling. She doesn’t know that the boy – her son, she corrects in her head, _her son_ – has come up behind her until he speaks.

“You used to take me to the water’s edge,” Morgan tells, and it makes Dinah visibly jerk. It is the first piece of information that Morgan has offered to her, and he says it as if there is no meaning in the words. He’s casual, crouched beside her to collect his own water. He’s still smiling. “I wasn’t very good at swimming, so you’d have to hold onto me. Father said he was going to teach me the next summer.”

Dinah swallows, her mouth dry. “And does he?”

“I can doggy paddle,” Morgan declares with an expression of pride. Dinah only hears that Frederick didn’t get to teach their son enough. She feels queasy, and there’s a tightness in her throat that makes her think she might actually cry. She pushes down on the feeling to answer, “I bet you’re good at it.”

“Better than Father,” he brags, and Dinah gasps a laugh. Her knees ache at his angle, so she lowers herself down from a crouch to a kneel. She supports herself with one hand in the dirt, and she knows that when she pulls away, the grass would have carved its imprint into the callous of her palm.

There’s a hand in her hair, pushing through, and a voice saying, “Don’t worry, Mama. It’s okay.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” she confesses.

Neither of them say any more, but Morgan lowers himself next to her, and when he presses against her side, she opens her arm to pull him closer. This is the first time she’s hugged her son, but this is the first time her son has been hugged by his mother in a while – she hopes it’s not been long, she hopes she was with Morgan for as long as possible. She hopes she was able to see how capable he is. She hopes she never got to see the fighter he has become because the world had demanded that of a child.

“Tell me something,” Dinah requests.

“Tell you what?”

“Anything,” she shrugs.

Morgan tells her that he drew up in the castle with Chrom, with Lissa, with Lucina and Kjelle and Owain – their jobs require them to be close by, and Chrom had offered them a suite to be used as they see fit. He tells her that he was told he learnt to walk because there was a white patch of wall that just needed to be covered with pink crayon. He tells her that his height would be marked on the doorframe to his bedroom, and when his parents were no longer able to, Morgan continued the tradition himself. He tells her that he loves to ride, that he’d never quite gotten the hang of ranged weapons but he’d moved from wooden practise swords to real iron within months. He tells her that he wants to be a tactician, like her, but the books he has that are currently sitting on her bookshelf, he has difficulty reading, that the words jump around the page and make no sense. He tells that that they always did that.

He tells that Frederick used to bring her flowers from town that would sit in the middle of the living room. That they’d have bear on the days that Father had to work late. That on the days his parents were busy, Morgan would go down to the kitchens to eat with the other children.

He tells Dinah that she used to sing him to sleep, and that her stories were the best. He tells her that the coat he wears is one of hers, and it’s all he has left.

(“I ask Owain to sew it when I need help,” he says, “he’s good with his hands.”

“Do you have anything of Fred – your father’s?”

A simple band hangs on a chain, and there is no way that Dinah wouldn’t recognise her husband’s wedding ring.)

He speaks until there’s nothing, and then they sit in silence. Morgan falls asleep, his head at an angle. He snores in her ear and drools on her shoulder. He sleeps like she does. Dinah doesn’t dare wake him, but she angles her face into his hair, and holds him tighter.

Frederick comes for them.  Dinah wonders whether that was intention. He’s out of armour, but his footfalls are distinct, heavy on the gravel. He blocks the sun when he stands over her, and he’s nothing but a shadow when Dinah looks up at him.

He’s quiet for a long while, and sighs when he sits beside her. His legs are too long, and fold awkwardly this close to the bank, but he is close to her. They haven’t spoken since they found Morgan, not about this – there are battle plans to work out, and next moves to consider, and they prove worthy distractions, even if Morgan’s mere presence seeks to destroy that. Now, his presence is welcome, a comfort under all she now knows and all she hasn’t experienced yet.

It’s Frederick who speaks first. “You shouldn’t leave the camp alone like this.”

“I wasn’t alone,” she replies automatically, and manages a tight smile that the unimpressed look she receives. Fredrick the Wary indeed.

There’s a sharp snort, and Frederick’s eyes slip down. Dinah wonders whether her husband has actually given himself the time to consider the realness of the boy beside her – their son, in the flesh, living and breathing, and so much like them it hurt. She keeps silent, and allows him the time he needs to breathe in their boy – she, after all, had been granted that herself.

“He looks like you,” is what Frederick can manage.

Dinah makes a noise of agreement. “He smiles like you.”

Her husband’s lips curl like he cannot help it, charmed by the prospect that he has this with his son. It makes her heart pound like it had when she had first been on the receiving end of it (and that was despite the plates of game, and the distinct smell of nausea between them), and it makes her ponder whether he would smile the same way when their son is first placed in his arms.

He’ll be a good father, and she doesn’t need Morgan to tell her that.

“I can’t believe he’s ours,” she admits quietly, and feels all kinds of relief when Fredrick murmurs back, “Me neither.” He meets her eye and continues, “We never really spoke about it. Children.”

“Never seemed like the right time,” Dinah says.

“We weren’t ready,” Frederick adds.

“Baby making is far more fun,” she latches, and laughs when the tips of Fredrick’s ears turn pink.

Morgan snuffles against her, and he moves closer to her. Dinah doesn’t breathe until he settles. If he sleeps like her, nothing short of an explosion could wake her before she is ready. Still, she mushes her cheek against his forehead when she rocks him. Frederick watches too closely, with too much weight and meaning.

“Eight,” he says softly, so much so that it takes a second for Dinah to process what is being said.

“What?”

“Eight,” he repeats, “That’s how old he was when we died.”

 _Oh._ It hits her straight in the gut, the pain has tendrils that stretch to every part of her body to plant itself there. Eight. “He was still a boy,” she muttered, “Fuck, he _is_ still a boy. Freddy…” she stops herself, because she doesn’t know how to verbalise how she feels. She guesses it is okay, because her expression is mirrored in Frederick’s and he, of all people, will understand.

His hand touches her back, and it chases the pain to soothe the edges, because it would never be able to take it away entirely. She wants to reach out and hold him back, but she doesn’t want to let go of Morgan more, so she presses back into Frederick’s palm and hopes that is enough. He puts his forehead to her temple, and this close, he smells like smoke and leaves and dirty metal. Another comfort.

“There’s time,” he speaks, a declaration that he will never allow for anything else, “We have time.”

“Fate is fate. Maybe somethings are meant to happen,” Dinah murmurs. She thinks of how Emmeryn had been saved from her assassin’s hand – but then her execution had been planned. She thinks of how they’d fought despite the risk, and how the exalt had sacrificed herself for the good of the realm, for the good of her family. No matter how hard Lucina had tried to stop it, Emmeryn’s death happened. Was _meant_ to happen. Perhaps theirs was too.

Frederick huffs hot air on her cheek. “Don’t tell me you believe that.”

She says nothing. She doesn’t know what she believes.

Frederick carries Morgan back to camp, the boy’s body limp over his father’s shoulder. Frederick’s hands are big on his back, cradling him close as if he’s done this before. (He has with Chrom and Lissa, Ricken once, a few times with Dinah). Dinah doesn’t need to hold onto Frederick’s hand, but she does anyway, walks side by side and wonders whether this is what their family was like the last time they were together.

Morgan is sharing a tent with Owain, but they take him to theirs and lay him on the camp roll. He splays across the sheets, arms spread, takes up as much space as possible, but doesn’t wake.

“What did you do to him?” Frederick teases, lips curled upwards and eyes fond.

Dinah snorts her amusement, nudges her shoulder against her husband’s arm. She cannot look away from the boy either.

“He’s ours,” she says after a while.

“He is,” Frederick agrees.

“He’s _ours_ ,” she repeats, presses and emphasises, “We don’t let anything happen to him.”

They lay together, the family of three. Morgan grasps the front of his parent’s shirts, and knows they are real here. Frederick listens to his families breathing and knows that they’re safe here. Dinah holds her son’s hand and feels her husband’s vow imprinted in her cheek: _No, we won’t._

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first FE fic, so I'd appreciate feedback!
> 
> Like my writing? Follow me on [tumblr](http://gladers.co.vu) :)


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